


Of Her Own Free Will

by ninjamonkey73



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22352401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjamonkey73/pseuds/ninjamonkey73
Summary: What if Kara had pulled up in Maelstrom?
Relationships: Lee "Apollo" Adama/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36





	Of Her Own Free Will

"Visual. Visual. Kara, I'm coming to get you." Relief briefly flooded through Lee. He could see her Viper. All was not lost. Yet.

Her voice crackled over his earpiece. "Lee... I'll see you on the other side."

The tight sensation of panic flared in his chest again. _What have I done? How did I think I could keep her safe out here?_ "Kara, please, listen to me! Come back."

As they approached the hard deck, the radio interference only got worse. "Just let me go," she said softly, sounding oddly at peace among the alarms and fierce turbulence.

"Godsdamn it, Kara! You come back! Come back!" He couldn't keep the panic from his voice as he saw the beginnings of re-entry flames flashing along her hull. _Gods, no!_

~~

His voice filtered through the hallucinations, tight, fearful, uncontrolled, pulling her up into lucidity. _What the hell am I doing?_ Fire flashed up the canopy and warning klaxons blared in protest. _Frak. Frak, frak, frak!_

Grabbing the throttle with her left hand and the stick more firmly in her right, Kara pulled back hard on both. The Viper whined, engine at full throttle, struggling against the gravity well of the gas giant. "Come on!" she yelled, eyes following another trail of flames up and over her head. The ship shook violently as she continued to push it to its limits to break free and climb again.

The altimeter shivered, once, twice, then began to climb. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from the instrument panel and she said a silent prayer that the ship would hold together long enough for her to clear the planet's gravity. By the time the Viper's systems began failing, she was coasting safely into the black of space.

Lee pulled up beside her, eyes wide with fear, his breathing loud and rapid over the comm. When he could finally bring himself to speak, he turned his eyes from her for a moment and hailed Galactica. "Galactica Actual. Apollo. I have her. Repeat, Starbuck is safe. We're going to need a SAR Raptor to bring her bird back, though."

Their Vipers hung unmoving in space, close enough that the tip of her scorched wing reached underneath his. She waited for the inevitable yelling, waited for the dressing down for potentially totaling her Viper, but the silence stretched on uncomfortably.

"Lee," she began.

"Don't, Kara. Let's just," he paused and swallowed hard, eyes glistening through the face shield of his helmet. "Let's just get back to Galactica."

~~

Realizing he was still clutching his control stick with white-knuckled intensity, Lee forced himself to let go. He flexed his fingers to relax them and frowned at the tremor in his hand. Exhaling heavily, he glanced sideways at Kara, a bit surprised she'd gone silent when he asked.

Heart still hammering in his chest, he tried to run through his pilot relaxation exercises. _Close your eyes. Count to five slowly as you inhale. Hold it for a three count. Exhale, counting back down from five._ He repeated the pattern, trying to block out the thoughts that kept renewing the panic in his chest.

 _If I leave Sam, will you leave Dee?_ He'd been so angry when she'd ask. Kara changed her mind about him like some people changed their clothes, and there was no guarantee she wouldn't change it again. And yet, with the memory of flames licking her hull still very fresh and her charred Viper beside him, one thing was very clear all of a sudden. Whether he could trust Kara to stick around or not, Dee deserved better than Kara's castoffs. He'd been trying so hard to be a good husband out of a misplaced sense of duty that he hadn't thought about what was fair to Dee.

Sure, she knew what she was getting when she agreed to marry him. Actually, her resignation to accept whatever was left of his heart in Kara's wake was what now made him realize he needed to be the bigger person and set Dee free. Maybe he and Kara could never be happy together, but almost losing her, watching helplessly from his Viper, had jarred him into acknowledging the truth that was there all along. He couldn't live without Kara and didn't want to try. Faking it with Dee changed nothing about his frakked up relationship with Kara Thrace.

Kara was going to be grounded indefinitely. That much at least was certain. And he would end it with Dee as soon as they returned, before he could change his mind. Dee deserved someone who wasn't in love with someone else.

~~

Kara felt oddly calm in the silence. For the first time in a while, she didn't feel a nagging pull to do anything. _Maybe that crazy frakker Leoben was wrong after all._ She ran back over the events that had led her to this moment of peace. She'd seen a Heavy Raider. At least, she had been sure she had seen one at the time, before she went on to hallucinate Leoben and her mother. The clouds had become the mandala she'd been seeing her whole life, which she'd painted on her apartment wall back before the end of the worlds, which had also been among the glyphs in the temple on the algae planet.

Flying into the mandala had made so much sense. She needed to. She belonged on the other side, more than she'd ever belonged here. And then Lee's voice had cut through the fog, full of emotions he normally could hold in check, and suddenly, the other side of the mandala was less important to her than getting back to him. For what, though? He said things were great with Dee, never better. She'd asked him to leave Dee and he'd balked. What had she even stayed for if he wouldn't leave his wife?

Feeling his eyes on her, she turned slowly, trying to shore up her Starbuck mask in the wake of her brush with death. She couldn't place the emotions playing across his face as he smiled weakly at her. She shrugged with her eyebrows in the tight cockpit, and returned a lopsided smile.

The hail from the SAR Raptor came before the silence became any more uncomfortable and she focused on the retrieval process and being towed back to Galactica.

~~

Lee finished his landing checklist as Kara's Viper got towed into the maintenance bay. The entire underside of the bird was blackened and more than a few hull plates looked melted or otherwise heat-damaged. Kara making it back alive in that ship was almost reason enough to believe in the gods.

He flagged down one of the deck security officers. "Private, when Captain Thrace completes her landing checklist, she is to be taken directly to Sickbay to see Cottle. Tell her I will meet her there as soon as I take care of some business."

The marine nodded, snapping off a small salute.

A quick glance at his watch and Lee turned on his heel, hoping to catch Dee still in their quarters before her next shift.

~~

Twenty minutes later, Kara sat obediently in Sickbay, the fight gone out of her. Cottle ran a battery of tests, all of which confirmed the only thing wrong with her was her head.

"Luckily, that's not my specialty," he huffed as he collected his things to leave her in the exam room. "Your orders are to wait here for Major Adama."

Kara didn't have to wait more than a couple of minutes before Lee came around the corner. His eyes were red-rimmed and he was absently fingering his left ring finger. When Kara noticed his wedding band was gone, her eyes went wide and flew to his face, confusion clouding her features.

Lee took a deep breath and began, "I got Cottle's report on the way in. You know you're grounded, right?"

She flashed him a hot look. "I wanted to be _before_ we went out there." Her eyes traveled back down to where his fingers still twisted around where his ring had been. "What's going on, Lee?"

He followed her eyes and dropped his hands to his side self-consciously. "Dee deserves better than me trying not to be in love with you. I asked her for a divorce right after I saw you'd gotten back safely."

Kara fought a wave of confusion. "You said things had never been better."

Lee laughed humorlessly. "The sad part is, that's the truth. But she'll never be you, Kara. In that moment when your ship was in flames and I didn't know if you could or would pull up in time, I realized that I may not be able to live with you, but I sure as hell can't live without you. I can't go on pretending Dee is enough, because she isn't."

Suddenly closer to tears than she wanted to be in Sickbay, Kara looked around quickly and tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. "I need to get out of here."

He nodded and offered a hand to help her down from the exam table. They lingered a moment, hands clasped tightly, and Kara fought the urge to pull him into a desperate kiss. He was still a married man, after all, and anyone could come around the corner without warning. She owed him the courtesy of behaving, if nothing else.

Gesturing toward the door for her to follow him, he dropped her hand. She felt immediately self-conscious and alone, realizing that conversations dropped to whispers as they passed. "Starbuck... nervous breakdown... grounded." She could make out snippets of conversation as they passed, but she wasn't as angry about the talk as she thought she'd be. The conversations should have been about her death, by all rights, but she'd cheated it once again. Somehow, that was enough to put a smile on her face as she followed Lee through the winding halls of Galactica to empty family quarters.

"We can talk in here, Captain," he said in almost a stage whisper.

Kara noticed they weren't alone in the hall and followed his lead. "Yes, sir."

Once inside, Lee engaged the lock and grabbed her into a frantic, clawing hug. His breath hitched and she realized he was crying as he rained kisses all over her face and neck.

"I'm okay, Lee. You pulled me back and I'm okay." She patted his back awkwardly, silent tears running down her own cheeks.

He leaned back, attempting to compose himself. After clearing his throat, he whispered, "Listen, I don't have any expectations. I just... I just needed to set Dee free for her sake."

"Yeah, well, Sam got tired of not being you and wants to divorce me for my own sake, so." She leveled a predatory smile at him. "How does Mr. Colonial Scout feel about fooling around if he's separated?"

Lee pulled her tightly to him, hands sliding down to her rear to hold her hips to his. He leaned down, teasing her lips with his, dodging when she tried to deepen the kiss. Finally, he let her capture his mouth in a searing kiss. When they broke for air, he breathed, "There's something you should know."

Kara sighed, ready for the other shoe to drop.

He continued, "I was never in the Colonial Scouts."

As she laughed loudly in the empty quarters, he began to peel off her flight suit.


End file.
